a view to examinations based upon a false estimate of the comparative value of different kinds of knowledge; often, too, with the discouraging consciousness that, so far as the essential good of the scholar is concerned, much effort is thus virtually wasted.

Now, with all this to do, under the pressure brought to bear upon us of comparisons and percentages, can we do still other and better things? Perhaps we shall find that in aiming at something higher we shall better accomplish even the task appointed us. We know that when intellect is quickened to its happiest activity in any one direction, it can be more easily trained to successful effort in other directions, and if we can lead our pupils to an inquiring interest in the great facts of the natural world which are continually present to the eye, we may find that to this awakened intellectual activity the difficulties disappear even from those arithmetical puzzles and grammatical abstractions upon which so much time is now spent. But how is this to be accomplished? Mainly by our own interest and enthusiasm. If we are thoroughly possessed with a love for any science, or even with a real desire to know, let us make that the central point from which influence shall radiate. All nature is but a varied expression of God's thought. We cannot fail in true work while we seek to read, or interpret, or ever so slowly syllable any line in this wonderful book. The great aim is to arouse a spirit of inquiry, to lead our pupils very early to walk with open eyes, and the whole being alive with the consciousness of the ceaseless working of mighty, though silent forces, according to immutable laws.

Last spring I found the desk of a primary school teacher literally covered with twigs and leaf buds. When I expressed my surprise at the great variety she had collected, she replied, "My children brought these. They have been much interested in noticing how the young leaves are folded up in the bud."

"But when do you find time? How do you manage the exercise?" "It can hardly be called an exercise. I take a few minutes now and then, either as a relief when they are tired, or as a reward when they have been particularly good; and sometimes we have little talks around my desk before or after school."

Who can calculate the blessings which may flow from this early

awakening? The child who has learned to ask how a leaf is rolled up in the bud will never stop there. Questions will come thronging that a teacher will need to keep herself ever learning in order to answer. She was no object-teacher in the technical use of that term, but most truly so, as all successful educators have ever been.

In conversation about Sabbath schools recently, some one asked, "How is one to manage a class of troublesome boys?" "I do not know," replied a wise mother and teacher, " unless it be by watching all through the week for things that will so illustrate and impress truth as to interest them thoroughly for the hour." We know with what marked success she carried out this idea. She had the secret which we all need to learn and apply in this specific direction, and we shall soon see a spirit of inquiry and investigation awakened, which will not cease when these pupils leave our classes, but which, developed and strengthened through maturer years, will lead to juster views and wiser legislation on the subject of education.

Perhaps geography, allied as it is with every department of nature, will furnish the best opportunity for such exercises.

Sometimes when I have seen recitations conducted in this study, admirably conducted considering the end in view, every hand up, every one eager to answer questions of location and statistics, I have thought how very easily this enthusiasm might be directed to something beyond, something infinitely more improving; and that too without lessening in the least their interest in this, which is right as far as it goes. No text-book could do for us what we need. It would become too voluminous. The living teacher must do the work, and make all things tributary to his design.

For this many of us require a special preparation. Perhaps some of us will say, we need to have that done for us which we propose to do for our pupils. We scarcely know the alphabet of any science, and how shall we instruct others? Let us learn. Helps are not wanting. Men of science understand the need, and are doing what they can to present science in a popular form. No class of men are more willing to share their intellectual treasures. We may not have time or opportunity or ability to become deeply versed in any department of science, but we may become appreciative and loving students of God's wonderful word chiselled in rock

and softly traced in most living light on leaf and flower; and with mind and heart full of a reverent desire to draw nearer to Him, though His works, we shall not fail to excite a like desire in those under our instructions.

Even as what we are is a greater educating power than what we say or do, so what we are seen to love will insensibly mould the taste of those who look up to us as friends and guides.

Do we complain of want of time for study? I know we have much to do; but some of us find time for crochetting and embroidery. I would not be understood as depreciating these feminine accomplishments by which many a dainty thing is deftly wrought to please the eye; but let us not bend over them to weariness, and call it work: let us not curiously fashion gay parterres out of worsted and silk, and forget to question how the lilies grow; let us not, as we weave these delicate fabrics, allow them, all unconsciously, to weave a film over our eyes which shall dim the wonderful light on earth and sky. But most of us are in no such danger. We have too many imperative claims upon our time. Let us none the less seek to reserve some portion of it for a generous self-culture, especially in the direction we have been considering. We shall be refreshed instead of exhausted by the effort. Life will glow with richer meaning at every step, and we may have the unspeakable joy of winning young hearts not only to see "splendour in the grass" and "glory in the flower," but to feel

"A sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."

South Boston.

М. К.

GILDED YOUTH.

[We take the following from the London Saturday Review. "Gilded youth" are not altogether unknown in this country.]

If the life of a silly woman who has been trained, and badly trained too, to catch men, is among the most despicable of all

imaginable forms of civilized existence, what are we to say of the life of her counterpart in the other sex, the man to whose standard and level she has been expressly trained, the nauseous compound of butterfly and satyr, who is her critic and the awarder of her ignoble laurels? If she is an astounding creature, what is he? If she is an amazing companion for a rational being, how rational are some of the beings to whose companionship, under the advice of her mother, she aspires, and for which she so laboriously schemes? After all, the fact that so many girls are annually trained up in a condition of absolute mental vacuity, shows of itself that this is a state which, to a good many of those for whom they are designed, is far from distasteful. The people who can endure the perpetual companionship of the brainless, must be themselves tolerably near the brainless stage. Physiognomy alone might show how many of the "curled darlings" of the season have anything like brains under their curls. The sight of some of these vapid, feeble, expressionless faces, which amuse and confound a philosophic lounger, may suggest ghastly visions of the fate that would befall such creatures, if they were mated with clever or fine-hearted women. The broad face of a Dorsetshire chaw-bacon beams with intelligence and brightness of apprehension by the side of the sheer vacuity of some of the countenances which startle one in Pall Mall. Besides we know that Hodge can honestly earn eight good shillings a week by his own individual and unaided effort, while, without influence and friends and a long-suffering nation, the sham Adonis of Belgravia would not earn a penny in a twelvemonth. The creature's speech is what might be expected from his brow, his feeble eye, his vapid mouth. It is slightly more articulate than the cluck of a Bosjesman, but there is not very much more meaning in it. We do not wish to borrow the theological horror at the idea of anybody with an immortal soul to save, talking such weakly trash as forms the staple of the speech of these persons. Only when one hears people declaim about the folly of woman it is worth while to remember that there are men, too, whose folly is unfathomable, and who, as Johnson said, would make a man to hang himself in sheer despair. Some women take little interest enough in those things

in which anybody with a pretension to be living a reasonable life ought to take an interest. But if a woman did, what doom would overtake her if she were to marry one of this desperate band of incroyables. The foolishest of virgins knows as much about politics as they do that is, neither of them knows anything whatever. The summary of their political opinion and feeling is the conviction that they detest Mr. Bright, and Beales, M. A., and would fain have them hung, if they could. In literature they do not shrink before the difficulty of an occasional acrostic. In art they get tiny, faint pulsations of pleasure from the pictures of the "Derby Day," or the "Railway Station." As for nature, her they hate. Fine scenery is a mere abomination of desolation to them. So, if a woman were not brought up to be a fool, what fellowship could she have with them? For if there is one thing which they, the extreme left of the great body of boobies, dread and execrate more than another, it is the tongue and glance of a woman who, by hazard, knows a fool when she sees one. It makes them tremble; for in spite of supercilious manner, the feeblest fop knows very well that brain is not his strong point, and at the same time he knows that somehow or other brain is a thing unaccountably in vogue. He also knows that there is a stubborn tradition to the effect that in this tiresome and inscrutable region, man is, or ought to be better endowed than women. Hence he has an uneasy consciousness, first that he ought to say and do something to keep up the honor of his sex, and secondly, that in the presence of some women he will have what the Americans call a bad time, if he tries to say or do this something. We cannot so much wonder after all that mothers with daughters whom they are anxious to settle, should shudder at the perils in which knowledge or brightness of mind or vigor of any sort would surely involve the fair candidates for the crown of marriage.

There are, however, worse faults than downright brainlessness. The extreme left of the exquisites is not the part of the truly astonishing organization which society has most need to fear or dislike. Worse than the plain vacuous fool is the fool who has brains enough to be vicious. The root of all corruption of character is idleness. This is no more than a copy-book com